PC gamers freaking out (or lying) about Mass Effect 3 intent

January 17th, 2012

Like Battlefield 3 before it, EA has announced that the upcoming Mass Effect 3 will not be available on Steam, the largest PC gaming store in America.

"Mass Effect 3 will be available on Origin and a number of other 3rd party digital retailers, but not on Steam at this time," a company official wrote on the game's official forum.

Although EA blames Valve's "restrictive terms of service," the move is largely seen as an attempt by EA to use a highly anticipated game they made to pump up the numbers of their proprietary Steam competitor, Origin.

Gamers, for the most part, are not happy about it. Or so they say.

"Guess I won't buy it, then," quipped PC Gamer commenter Candle. "Me neither," said another. "It looked good, but time to use our wallets as ballots."

Hundreds of comments follow in the similar vein of "No steam = no money from me."

Thunderchild82, however, took a different side. "All these people saying they won't buy ME3 just because it's on Origin are lying," he says. "This is a game they all want and will buy it no matter where they get it from."

Grawobi then minced a few words. "All of you childish haters have to realize that you are robbing yourself of a great product AGAIN (battlefield 3 was the first one)."

Gamer Maktaka, on the other hand, offered a compromise. "You know you can install Origin solely for the installation process, then remove it after activation and keep playing the game, yes?"

To which nbringer replied, "Then what is the point of this (junk) program called Origin!? Couldn't the game activate itself and leave us alone?"

Whichever side of the issue you're on, one thing's for certain: Mass Effect 3 will likely sell just as well as the Steam-less Battlefield 3 did before it: very well.

Mass Effect 3 arrives March 6 on Windows exclusively through Origin. What do you think of the controversy?

Read more: PC gaming news